Conventional technology has known various approaches to generating and indicating a three-dimensional depiction of an object, e.g. in the form of a sequence of single images, or frames, or of a 3D film. FIG. 1 shows a schematic depiction of a conventional approach to producing, transmitting and depicting a stereoscopic film including a multitude of single images. For simplicity's sake, FIG. 1 shows a cube 100 as the object to be depicted. A first camera 102 generates a first image 100a of the cube from a first perspective, and a second camera 104 generates a second image 100b of the cube from a second perspective different from the first perspective. In other words, the pictures 100a and 100b of the cube 100 are generated from different angles of view. The single images 100a, 100b which have been thus generated and received are provided to a suitable stereoscopic reproduction unit 108, e.g. a monitor, for depiction. Instead of cameras 102 and 104, it is also possible to employ a shared 3D camera, which will also take two pictures of the object 100, which will then be transmitted, in the above-described manner, to the monitor 108 for depiction.
The conventional approach described by means of FIG. 1 is disadvantageous since the amount of data of at least two images 100a and 100b, which is to be transmitted via the transmission medium 106, is very large, which involves a correspondingly long data transmission time period. Even if the two-dimensional pictures or images 100a, 100b are compressed, the amount of time involved in compressing the data will be large, so that the overall transmission time from the point where the picture of the object 100 is generated to the point where three-dimensional reproduction is to occur is very long. For example, let us assume a stereoscopic picture of the cube 100, and with the procedure described by means of FIG. 1, the following storage space may be used for transmitting the data which are useful for depiction of a frame of the cube on the monitor 108 while assuming an image size of 1024×768 pixels: 2 images×1024 (X value)×768 (Y value)×3 (RGB color value)=4,718,592 bytes.
Said large amount of data results in the long transmission time periods mentioned above and renders transmission of moving pictures of a moving object in a three-dimensional implementation almost impossible, since for this purpose a transmission of up to 30 frames per second is useful, each frame comprising the amount of data indicated above. Thus, such a transmission of a moving object 100, the movement of which is to be depicted in a three-dimensional manner at the receiving side 108, is possible only with a large time delay, so that, in particular, a livestream or the like is not possible at all. Transmission of a 3D film is also virtually impossible due to the bandwidth that may be used.
The above-mentioned transmission of a livestream in a three-dimensional quality, or transmission of a three-dimensional live sequence, is desired, for example, in the context of taking pictures of people and ambient spaces. Taking pictures of people and ambient spaces while using 3D cameras, and reproducing same as a 3D film involves the above-mentioned problem of the enormous amounts of data which cannot be transmitted on the Internet, which is due to the fact that the data may be stored and transmitted as conventional sequences of 2D images. Approaches known in conventional technology deal with encoding and transmitting of 2D image data from video recordings; however, the amount of data and the associated amount of encoding time are too large for said two-dimensional solution in connection with 3D image data, so that the fundamental problem of transmitting the data that may be used for three-dimensional depiction of an object, e.g. also as a moving picture, remains.